seanpatrick.phd

seanpatrick.phd, 6 days ago to poetry

A burst of color in bespeckled night,<br></br>you came into my life like foxfire’s glow:<br></br>and I was left agape beneath your light,<br></br>a dancing phosphorescence on the snow.<br></br><br></br>I tried awhile to catch you in my grip,<br></br>like clay that reaches upward to the sun;<br></br>and earthbound I, like sunlit dirt, would slip<br></br>and end our rendezvous ere it begun.<br></br><br></br>Aurora, how I long to watch you dance!<br></br>Once in my lifetime I had eyes to see<br></br>your form across the starlit night by chance;<br></br>to some you’re commonplace, but not to me.<br></br><br></br>Aurora, you who animates the sky,<br></br>I’ll never hold you, but I’ll always try.<br></br>

https://seanpatrick.phd/2024/05/11/sonnet-for-an-aurora/

#poem #poetry #sonnet

seanpatrick.phd, 9 days ago to poetry

If you look close enough at life,<br></br>observe with care the galaxy<br></br>and navel-gaze for long enough,<br></br>you will in time be made to see<br></br>we cannot by mere science find<br></br>an answer to the question why;<br></br>our lamp-oil may be well refined,<br></br>but we will still in darkness die.<br></br><br></br>We live atop a heavy tower<br></br>that teeters on its burdened base:<br></br>we drink a fresh-poured pint of power<br></br>and revel in our heightened place.<br></br>By intellect we’ve donned the crown,<br></br>from Babel’s peak we now aspire;<br></br>yet we’ve neglected to look down<br></br>and see the fundaments on fire.<br></br><br></br>Our morals have not matched our means:<br></br>for in this world that we’ve designed,<br></br>self-interest coldly contravenes<br></br>our common cause, and leaves us blind.<br></br>We’ve found a thousand ways to kill<br></br>but lost the ways to live, to feel –<br></br>we have engineered a modern marvel<br></br>and fallen asleep at the wheel.<br></br>

https://seanpatrick.phd/2024/05/09/babel/

#poem #poetry

seanpatrick.phd, 13 days ago to poetry

It took the work of years to make us friends,<br></br>of hours of hardship, days of idle chatter –<br></br>of conflict, followed by sincere amends;<br></br>of arguments that simply didn’t matter –<br></br>and we were young, and thought we’d have our lives<br></br>to be close by and never out of touch.<br></br><br></br>How wrong we were! The memory survives<br></br>of you and I, and hasn’t tarnished much,<br></br>but you are gone and shan’t in time return.<br></br><br></br>I wonder if I come across your thoughts,<br></br>or if mine was a bridge you meant to burn:<br></br>its blackened span yet stands; its trestle rots.<br></br><br></br>It took the work of years to build our bond,<br></br>and in the space of seconds it was gone.<br></br>

https://seanpatrick.phd/2024/05/05/sonnet-for-a-burned-bridge/

#poem #poetry #sonnet

seanpatrick.phd, 2 months ago to Cognition

The world that’s filtered through a sensor<br></br>is more than just a sterile tensor:<br></br>for all the truths in what’s outside,<br></br>the lies en route can’t be denied.<br></br><br></br>You sit behind your brain, I fear,<br></br>and every sense that you hold dear<br></br>is filtered through a lump of fat<br></br>while neuropeptides have a chat.<br></br><br></br>By the time a thing’s in your awareness<br></br>(that sense of conscious being-there-ness)<br></br>the world without’s been warped and twisted<br></br>by worlds within that once existed.<br></br><br></br>The things that you could swear are real<br></br>are mere veneers of what you feel:<br></br>the only truth you’ll ever know<br></br>is writ in what makes ions go –<br></br>and everything you’ve ever seen<br></br>has left a trail of dopamine.<br></br><br></br>Objective truth is nonexistent,<br></br>you’ve but the world that’s most consistent<br></br>with stimuli that came and went.<br></br>Don’t trust the world that’s evident,<br></br>for every rule’s a neural trick<br></br>and life is full of surprises.<br></br>

https://seanpatrick.phd/2024/02/24/filter/

#cognition #poem #poetry #subjectivity

seanpatrick.phd, 2 months ago to poetry

Two bodies on a mattress lie,<br></br>but even ruddy roses die.<br></br>When morning comes, two bodies rise,<br></br>they go about their daily lives,<br></br>where body and body shall not diverge<br></br>(but even ruddy roses die)<br></br>and when body and body have lost the urge<br></br>to lay together in a breathless sigh,<br></br>and hearts beat slow beneath their touch,<br></br>something else must yet remain,<br></br>a love that’s not recorded much.<br></br><br></br>Equanimous, it’s unadorned and plain:<br></br>a bodiless desire, longing without pain,<br></br>a sense of being right at home<br></br>without the need to leave again.<br></br>Even ruddy roses die, and bodies too shall go.<br></br><br></br>When cold winds wrap a pair of lovers,<br></br>that unsung love’s what keeps them from the falling snow –<br></br>not fiery passion or the many others,<br></br>which burn out in the frigid night –<br></br>but a sheltered love that binds two spirits tight.<br></br>

https://seanpatrick.phd/2024/02/21/even-ruddy-roses-die/

#poem #poetry

seanpatrick.phd, 2 months ago to poetry

I will return this dirt to Earth in time,<br></br>this mud and clay that has been made a man<br></br>and walks and speaks in hapless pantomime<br></br>of some design, then crumbles back to sand.<br></br><br></br>This temporary home that I have found<br></br>will be in time possessed by its first lord,<br></br>and I’ll no longer linger in the ground<br></br>when I’ve consigned this dust and cut the cord.<br></br><br></br>Yet where will I, in time, be thus removed?<br></br>Will I, somehow, find my way back to you?<br></br><br></br>The destination past this world’s unproved,<br></br>and we, for now, are merely passing through.<br></br><br></br>This body is no more than a conveyance:<br></br>to locate you, and then rest in abeyance.<br></br>

https://seanpatrick.phd/2024/02/20/sonnet-for-a-conveyance/

#poem #poetry #sonnet

seanpatrick.phd, 3 months ago to Depression

There is no poem in me today,<br></br>the music of my spirit sleeps<br></br>and golden things have fallen dull<br></br>while my internal jester weeps.<br></br><br></br>The joys I had have all gone deaf,<br></br>my muted sense of beauty dried<br></br>and shriveled under harsher light,<br></br>by introspection it has died.<br></br><br></br>Today I am a shallow husk,<br></br>a drab container for my mind,<br></br>I look with sallow, bleary eyes<br></br>at tarnished words that once have shined.<br></br><br></br>There is no song to hear today,<br></br>there is no pleasure to be had,<br></br>but I draw breath, I yet survive,<br></br>and for my life, I am yet glad.<br></br><br></br>The sadnesses of life all come<br></br>and go again, in their due time;<br></br>afflatus winds will blow again<br></br>and life, like verse, resolve in rhyme.<br></br><br></br>I am for just one hour entrapped in night:<br></br>I must endure its chill ‘til morning’s light.<br></br>

https://seanpatrick.phd/2024/02/17/in-night/

#depression #poem #poetry

seanpatrick.phd, 3 months ago to poetry

You are beautiful the way that life is beautiful,<br></br>made of a thousand pieces not quite fit<br></br>to one another’s edges,<br></br>and in the places where they meet<br></br>there is a kind of kintsugi within the way<br></br>they have been joined, as though they were<br></br>less brittle for having broken,<br></br>as though the little imperfections were accents on a theme,<br></br>as though you were a synchronicity<br></br>that took the senselessness of being<br></br>and put it into glowing context.<br></br><br></br>You are beautiful the way the world is beautiful,<br></br>the way that snow falls on uneven stones<br></br>and branches reach up to the sun,<br></br>the way you twist and turn in adaptation<br></br>to where the light pulls on your leaves.<br></br>You are beautiful the way a waterfall goes home,<br></br>the way a fire burns bright until it ends,<br></br>you are beautiful the way the ocean stands<br></br>and ripples in the passing wind.<br></br><br></br>You are beautiful the way that I am beautiful,<br></br>always and without a choice,<br></br>you are beautiful the way that love is pain,<br></br>the way belonging aches in places<br></br>you did not know you had,<br></br>the way that unseen things compel<br></br>our eyes to see the beauty in everything.<br></br>You are beautiful the way a secret is beautiful<br></br>when it is told, the way time is beautiful<br></br>when it is passed with a song.<br></br>You are beautiful, you are beautiful,<br></br>the way that nothing else can ever be.<br></br>

https://seanpatrick.phd/2024/02/14/for-jessica/

#love #poem #poetry

seanpatrick.phd, 3 months ago to poetry

After Rainer Maria Rilke's "Liebeslied";<br></br>see my translation <a href="https://seanpatrick.phd/2024/02/10/a-translation-of-rilkes-love-song/">here</a>.<br></br><br></br><br></br>How many love songs will my heartstrings play<br></br><br></br>before they will be muted by my death?<br></br><br></br>How many times will I those three words say<br></br><br></br>with passion-tightened chest and bated breath?<br></br><br></br><br></br>Someday, I know, I will find my last love<br></br><br></br>and kiss their lips as fully as I can<br></br><br></br>while I make my appeal to God above<br></br><br></br>to keep me longer in the world of man,<br></br><br></br>just long enough to keep the player’s bow<br></br><br></br>pressed to the strings on which our hearts resound.<br></br><br></br><br></br>There are so many different loves to know<br></br><br></br>before the end, and beauty’s notes abound!<br></br><br></br><br></br>Let me remain with them on Earth, O Lord,<br></br><br></br>‘til our love’s song can sing its final chord.<br></br><br></br>

https://seanpatrick.phd/2024/02/10/sonnet-for-a-love-song/

#love #poem #poetry #sonnet

seanpatrick.phd, 3 months ago to poetry

Wie soll ich meine Seele halten, daß<br></br>sie nicht an deine rührt? Wie soll ich sie<br></br>hinheben über dich zu andern Dingen?<br></br>Ach gerne möcht ich sie bei irgendwas<br></br>Verlorenem im Dunkel unterbringen<br></br>an einer fremden stillen Stelle, die<br></br>nicht weiterschwingt, wenn deine Tiefen schwingen.<br></br>Doch alles, was uns anrührt, dich und mich,<br></br>nimmt uns zusammen wie ein Bogenstrich,<br></br>der aus zwei Saiten eine Stimme zieht.<br></br>Auf welches Instrument sind wir gespannt?<br></br>Und welcher Spieler hat uns in der Hand?<br></br>O süßes Lied!

How do I stop my soul from<br></br>resonating with yours? How will I <br></br>have kept myself from ringing in your name?<br></br>Ah, how I would rather hide you anywhere –<br></br>forgotten in darkness, kept beneath,<br></br>within a strange and silent place that<br></br>does not reverberate when your depths resound.<br></br>But all that flows between us, you and I,<br></br>pulls us together like a cello’s bow<br></br>that makes two strings sing in one voice.<br></br>What instrument have we been strung upon? <br></br>And what musician’s hands now hold the bow?<br></br>How sweet the song!<br></br>

https://seanpatrick.phd/2024/02/10/a-translation-of-rilkes-love-song/

#love #poem #poetry #Rilke #translation

seanpatrick.phd, 3 months ago to poetry

The sun will rise today on war,<br></br>that cold and ugly thing.<br></br>The earth has seen its like before,<br></br>and won’t abide delay of Spring —<br></br><br></br>though bombs explode and soldiers fall,<br></br>though sanctions echo emptily,<br></br>the world will turn throughout it all,<br></br>the birds will still sing merrily.<br></br><br></br>Despite ourselves, we are not gods,<br></br>whose conflicts rise to alter fate:<br></br>the mud fills tracks that boots have trod,<br></br>the earth will shudder and rotate.<br></br><br></br>If nuclear winter doesn’t fall this year,<br></br>the flower-buds will still be here.<br></br>

https://seanpatrick.phd/2024/02/09/the-persistence-of-spring/

#poem #poetry #war

seanpatrick.phd, 3 months ago to Apocalypse

The coral reefs are dying.<br></br><br></br>I’ve never seen a coral reef and I probably never will,<br></br>the same is true of a variety of species and natural wonders,<br></br>but then again, the world is not a garden of delights <br></br>designed solely for my enjoyment,<br></br>probably.<br></br><br></br>There will still be an Earth left over here <br></br>once people are done enjoying it.<br></br>The garbage will stick around for a while,<br></br>but life will go on,<br></br>probably.<br></br><br></br>Oceans filled with acids and microplastics,<br></br>dusty fields of bleached-white bones,<br></br>even human beings (or things quite like them) <br></br>fighting over what’s been left<br></br>with sticks and sharpened stones.<br></br><br></br>It’s not the first time things have gone so far awry.<br></br>It’s not the end of the world, per se, <br></br>just the exhalation of a deep breath,<br></br>the boundary of one cycle and the next,<br></br>probably.<br></br><br></br>Still, it would be nice to see a coral reef before it’s done.<br></br>

https://seanpatrick.phd/2024/02/08/not-the-end-of-the-world-per-se/

#apocalypse #climateChange #endOfTheWorld #nature #poem #poetry